One of the world's most erudite and entertaining film critics on the state of cinema in the post-digital-and post-9/11-age. This witty and allusive book, in the style of classic film theorists/critics like Andr Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer, includes considerations of global cinema's most important figures and films, from Lars von Trier and Jia Zhangke to WALL-E, Avatar and Inception.